John Charles Michie

Company K, 12th Illinois Volunteer Infantry

Company F, 37th Illinois Volunteer Infantry

John Charles Michie enlisted as a private in the Illinois
Infantry and fought on the Union side during the civil war. At
the age of 17 on April 2, 1861, he enlisted in Company K, 12th
Volunteer Illinois Infantry where he served 90 days. Then in
the fall of 1861, he enlisted in Company F, 37th Illinois Infantry.
He re-enlisted at Brownsville, Texas as a veteran after the civil
war and was eventually discharged with his whole unit from the
army in Houston, Texas, May 12, 1866. He fought in many significant
battles of the civil war including Sugar Creek, Pea Ridge, Neoska,
Netonia, Prairie Grove, Vicksburg, and Blakely (Alabama).

After the civil war, John Michie returned to Chicago where
he worked in a bakery for eleven years. On November 26, 1868,
he married Mary Susan Curtis. September 1877, John and Mary Susan
homesteaded near Beaver Creek (Ravenna) in Nebraska. They had
twelve children with seven surviving to adulthood (Margaret Michie
Curran "Maggie" 1871-1950; John Charles Michie Jr 1873-1936;
George Curtis Michie 1881-1930; Katharine McGregor Michie Hochreiter
1883-1968; David Francis "Dave" Michie 1886-1946; James
Michie 1889-1958; Veronica Michie Cleveland "Ve" 1890-1984;
and Joseph Esam "Ese" Michie 1892-1976).

John and Mary Susan Michie farmed near Beaver Creek, Nebraska.
After a while, they sold their farm and moved into the town of
Ravenna. John served his community well as justice of the peace,
town clerk, school director, and as a Sherman County schoolteacher.
Their children Margaret "Maggie" Michie Curran and
Katharine McGregor Michie Hochreiter continued to live in Nebraska.
Their son John Charles Michie Jr moved to Chicago, Illinois to
work in the bakery business. Their daughter Veronica "Ve"
eventually moved to California with her husband Grover "Pete"
Cleveland. Three of their sons (James, Ese, and George) moved
to Merigold, Bolivar County, Mississippi to work for their Bremner
- Michie cousins in a cotton plantation business set up by Illinois
Infantry 19th's Captain David Francis Bremner -- who married
John's sister Katharine Michie. David Francis Michie joined the
Burlington Railroad and worked out of Alliance, Nebraska before
transferring to Rawlins, Wyoming and eventually working for the
Union Pacific Railroad, dying in 1946 in a train wreck in Sweetwater
County, Wyoming near Rock Springs.

John was an active member in the G.A.R. Grand Army of the
Republic after the civil war. He was said to have enjoyed talking
about the days of the civil war with other veterans. When he
went to Lincoln, Nebraska he would inquire as to where the civil
war veterans would be so that he could visit. In his later years,
the joke would be that he would be told that the veterans were
all at Wyuka where upon he would ask where Wyuka was so that
he could go there to visit. Wyuka, of course, was a cemetery
in Lincoln, Nebraska.

John Charles Michie was born 16 April 1844 in Lyons, Cook
County, Illinois - the son of immigrants from Scotland (James
Hunt Michie and Margaret Katherine Guthrie). He died 1 April
1919 at 3 p.m. in Ravenna, Nebraska due to nephritis. His death
certificate stated that he had been under the care of Charles
A. Hale, M.D. from March 10, 1919 to April 1, 1919. He was 74
years, 11 months, and 15 days at the time of death. He was buried
in the Highland Cemetery in Ravenna, Nebraska on April 4, 1919.

Written and contributed by Tawnya
Michie Kumarakulasingam, 312-F Hampton Court, Lawrence,
KS 66049, 785-331-2055, [email protected] From John Charles
Michie to David Francis Michie to John Richard Michie to William
David Michie to Tawnya Marie Michie Kumarakulasingam.